Kirk Wessler: Patriotic duty calls for old Brave

Sunday

Jun 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 29, 2008 at 1:30 AM

The telephone rang, and Marcus Pollard didn't recognize the number showing on the caller ID. So he asked his wife to answer. When Amani handed him the phone, Marcus says, he feigned weariness, as if arising from a nap.

Kirk Wessler

The telephone rang, and Marcus Pollard didn't recognize the number showing on the caller ID. So he asked his wife to answer. When Amani handed him the phone, Marcus says, he feigned weariness, as if arising from a nap.

"Marcus?" the caller said.

"Yes?" Pollard said weakly.

"This is Bill Belichick."

"How you doing, Coach?" Pollard said, his voice snapping to attention for the head coach of the New England Patriots.

This was late April, a few days before the NFL draft. Pollard, a 14-year veteran tight end without a contract, says several teams had expressed interest in talking with him - after they saw how their drafts went. He wasn't expecting a call before anyone had picked fresh meat for the grinder, and especially not from the coach of the closest thing the league has to a dynasty in the 21st century.

Belichick told Pollard he was looking for experience, a leader who still had something to offer on the field but could help groom younger players for the future.

"A perfect fit for me," Pollard says.

He signed a one-year contract for a reported $830,000, but with no guarantees he'll even make the cut when the season begins in September.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Pollard says.

Remember, this is a guy who has fought for everything. He never played college football, opting instead for a basketball career. Bradley signed him out of Seward County Community College in Kansas in 1992, and the fans here still revere him as a captain who led the Braves out of a five-year abyss to a 23-win season and the NIT quarterfinals in 1994.

Pollard's heart was always bigger than his body. At 6-feet-3, he was severely undersized as a power forward and lacked perimeter skills, so his pro hoops options were limited. But he was still a terrific athlete, with capacity to bulk up. Friends set him up for a free-agent tryout with the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, who were intrigued enough to sign him. By mid-season 1995, he was on their active roster. A year later, Pollard was starting games.

"Competition is what it's all about," Pollard says. "That's how I prepare, that's how I train every day. That was my mentality all those years in Indy. I never went to camp believing I had the job locked up. I always went to prove myself.

"And that's what the philosophy is in New England."

It's just that never - never in 10 years with the Colts, who became the Pats' archrivals in the AFC, nor in his two seasons with the Detroit Lions, nor last season with the Seattle Seahawks - did Pollard imagine someday he would don a New England uniform.

"Enemies," Pollard says. That's what Belichick's Patriots are to the rest of the NFL, if not humanity.

In fact, Pollard doesn't soft-pedal the expectations he carried to mini-camp this spring.

"I thought Rodney Harrison would be a butthead," he says of the Patriots' two-time Pro Bowl safety.

But as camp unfolded, and Harrison defended him on drill-after-drill, pass pattern after pass pattern, Pollard changed his mind.

"He turned out to be a great guy," Pollard says.

"He paid me a huge compliment. He told me I looked like I could play another three or four years if I want. That's probably the best thing I could have heard, and it came from a guy who defended me."

It was particularly sweet for Pollard, because there have been doubts about his future. He's 36 years old, which is ancient in the NFL. He also underwent surgery to remove floating cartilage in his right knee during last season; a procedure from which he is still recovering even though it kept him out of only one game. Then there was his frustrating performance against Green Bay in the playoffs: a fumble, which set up a Packers touchdown, and two dropped passes, one in the end zone.

At mini-camp, Pollard still had a slight limp, which did not go unnoticed by reporters covering the proceedings. He says that's gone now and suggests the people who wrote about it come back to check him out when training camp begins in a few weeks.

Pollard is much more interested in the assessments of his new teammates and coach.

"Tom Brady (the All-Pro quarterback) came up to me and said, 'You're going to help us so much. We're glad you're here,'" Pollard says.

Pollard is glad, too, even if he is with football's Evil Empire. It's a business, after all, not a popularity contest. The Patriots are proven winners, and that's something Pollard has been all his life.

Kirk Wessler is Peoria Journal Star executive sports editor/columnist. He can be reached at kwessler@pjstar.com.